Ed Miliband, the United Kingdom’s secretary of energy and climate change, announced on Friday the government’s “clean power 2030” plan, which includes measures giving ministers final approval of large onshore wind farms.

The plan is part of an “ambitious” goal of reaching 95 percent green energy by the end of the decade, reported BBC News.

“A new era of clean electricity for our country offers a positive vision of Britain’s future with energy security, lower bills, good jobs and climate action. This can only happen with big, bold change and that is why the government is embarking on the most ambitious reforms to our energy system in generations,” Miliband said in a government press release. “The era of clean electricity is about harnessing the power of Britain’s natural resources so we can protect working people from the ravages of global energy markets.”

Miliband also wants the country’s energy regulator to have the power to tackle energy projects waiting to be hooked up to the National Grid, BBC News said.

The Labour government wants large onshore wind projects to be brought back into England’s Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project system, along with other energy infrastructure.

Labour’s plans would give the government the final word on the approval of wind projects bigger than 100 megawatts (MW), instead of putting local councils — which have frequently expressed opposition — in charge.

“We welcome the prospect of slashing red tape for grid connections, overturning the onshore wind ban in England and allowing more special offers to slash energy bills. Britain’s high energy prices stem from years of bad rules that don’t allow us to build renewable energy in the places it’s needed, or make use of cheap wind when it’s abundant, so these are positive steps,” said Greg Jackson, CEO of Octopus Energy, in the press release.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said Labour’s new proposals will generate 40 billion pounds annually in private sector funds, The Guardian reported.

The plan was welcomed by environmental groups, as well as the energy industry.

The announcement followed Tuesday’s signing of the last investment decision for the first carbon capture project in the UK at Teesside. Construction will begin in mid-2025, with the East Coast Cluster set to capture and sequester carbon emissions from the region’s industries.

Environmentalists urged the government not to invest in carbon capture projects in lieu of renewable energy development.

“Any money earmarked for carbon capture and storage – which is expensive, impossible to make zero carbon and fails to detach electricity prices from the volatile international gas market – would be better spent on the renewables, grid and storage infrastructure that will actually deliver clean power,” said Doug Parr, Greenpeace UK’s director of policy, as reported by The Guardian.

The release of the new action plan followed a National Energy System Operator (NESO) analysis of pathways to Labour’s 2030 goal provided to the Energy Department. NESO called the target a “huge challenge,” but “achievable,” PA Media reported.

UK ministers are looking to release the country from its fossil fuel dependence, which was made clear when Britain’s energy bills skyrocketed to record highs following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, reported The Guardian.

The UK government will begin a call for evidence for parking lot solar panel canopies in 2025. It said a significant number of solar panels could also potentially be installed on factory and warehouse roofs, with one-fifth of the largest warehouses in the UK providing as much as 15GW of solar capacity.

Low solar and wind power generation has forced the UK to lean heavily on the burning of wood and gas pellets. Roughly 65 percent of Britain’s electricity supply comes from gas and biomass, while just 5.3 percent is generated by wind.

“The winds of change are finally blowing in the right direction. But this roadmap must treble the amount of power generated by offshore wind and solar and double onshore wind, at least, if it’s to deliver the kind of ambition needed to turbocharge our way to a renewably powered future,” Parr said, as The Guardian reported.

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The rapidly increasing amount of land on Earth that is affected by excess salt will lead to potentially devastating effects on global food production, according to a new report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

The report, Global Status of Salt-Affected Soils, found that roughly 3.41 billion acres — 10.7 percent of land worldwide — is impacted by salinity, with another 2.47 billion acres classified as “at risk,” reported The Guardian.

“Salt-affected soils, characterized by high soluble salts (saline) or exchangeable sodium (sodic), impact plant growth and occur globally, especially in arid and coastal regions. Salinization stems from natural causes (e.g. climate change, sea level rise) and human actions (e.g. poor irrigation practices, excessive water use),” a press release from FAO said. “Increasing aridity and water demand amplify soil degradation risks, particularly in developing regions.”

Salinity is already severely afflicting agriculture worldwide, with approximately one-tenth of irrigated cropland and a similar amount that is watered by rain being affected by excess salt, The Guardian reported. In some cases, as much as 70 percent of crop yields could be lost.

“[T]he pressure to convert once marginal land into fertile land is intensifying. This phenomenon is particularly pronounced in semiarid and arid regions, which rely heavily on irrigation for agricultural production and are scarce in fresh water resources,” the report said. “As a result, secondary salinization – the gradual and human-induced accumulation of salts in the soil – is a serious obstacle to agricultural production. The situation is set to worsen with the increasing effects of global warming and climate change, forcing populations to abandon degraded areas and triggering migration.”

FAO’s Global Map of Salt-Affected Soils revealed that the countries most impacted were Australia, Argentina and Kazakhstan.

Some of the largest, most populated nations in the world are affected by rising salinity, including the United States, China and Russia, reported The Guardian. Central Asia, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Sudan and Iran were also found to be hotspots.

The report from FAO was its first major assessment of soil salinity in five decades.

If current trends continue, as global heating increases the scope of salt-affected soils is likely to expand to from a quarter to a third of Earth’s total land by 2100.

Excess salinity negatively impacts soil fertility, as abundant salt absorbs water, leaving less for plants. Salt also causes soils to clump, making them more prone to erosion.

Sea level rise will exacerbate increasing salinity as it brings saltwater further inland.

“Climate change and water scarcity threaten agricultural productivity, with substantial crop yield losses observed in saline areas. Halophytes and salt-tolerant crops provide a foundation for saline agriculture, yet many salt-affected soils remain unprotected and inadequately regulated,” FAO said. “Key recommendations include scaling sustainable practices, investing in salt-tolerant crop markets, improving data collection and water quality monitoring, conserving ecosystems, and fostering cross-sector collaboration.”

The report found that the best ways to restore soil fertility were mitigating climate change and using traditional methods like interlayering soils; mulching; improving crop rotations; developing salt-resistant crops; and using fungi, bacteria and plants that have the ability to store salts, The Guardian reported.

Regenerative agriculture focusing on natural soil fertility can also help. 

“Without financially supporting farmers to restore their soils, [declining fertility] will impact everyone who relies on food to live – which is all of us,” said Anand Ethirajalu, project director of farmer-support campaign Cauvery Calling, as reported by The Guardian.

Growing agricultural pressures, along with global heating, are drying out global lands. Experts warned that declining soil fertility and increasing salinity are creating novel threats to the world’s food production.

“Global famine is no longer a distant threat. The soil crisis is invisible to many, but its impact will be felt in every corner of the world, if policymakers fail to act,” said Praveena Sridhar, chief technical officer of the Save Soil movement, as The Guardian reported.

The FAO report was presented on Wednesday at the International Soil and Water Forum in Bangkok.

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In a whale migration of epic proportions, a humpback has been recorded making a journey of more than 8,077 miles from Colombia to Tanzania.

A team of marine ecologists says it’s the longest individual whale migration ever recorded, topping the old record of 6,214 miles.

“Humpback whales have complex behavior, but to find an adult male whale halfway around the world is unexpected,” said co-author of the research Ted Cheeseman, a whale biologist at Southern Cross University, as reported by Science.

Cheeseman explained that, while a whale will sometimes move from one group to a different one nearby, in order to get all the way to Tanzania the humpback would have had to pass through two Atlantic-based groups.

“This is more ‘foreign’ than any humpback previously documented,” Cheeseman noted.

The observation of the whale’s extraordinary journey was enabled by modified facial recognition software that was designed to identify whales by the distinct shapes of their flukes.

Photos helped identify the whale in three locations. Kalashnikova et al., Royal Society Open Science, 2024

These “flukeprints” have saved marine scientists many hours of looking over photos in the hopes of uncovering a match based on distinctive markings such as scars, notches and color patterns, said marine mammal biologist Christie McMillan with the Fisheries and Oceans Canada Cetacean Research Program, who did not participate in the study.

A flukeprint is as unique as a fingerprint.

“It’s like a five-metre banner of their ID,” said Cheeseman, as The Guardian reported.

According to McMillan, the identification of the humpback who made the incredible journey is a testament to the usefulness of Happywhale.com, a fluke-identification program co-founded by Cheeseman 15 years ago that examines photographs by biologists as well as ordinary people, reported Science.

After decades of leading nature tours in polar regions, Cheeseman found that regular citizens like his customers could be a valuable source of data.

Dr. Vanessa Pirotta, a whale scientist who was not part of the research team, said the technology could “take a single day of whale watching and turn it into something remarkable,” as The Guardian reported.

Happywhale “is an incredibly valuable tool” that “has allowed for collaboration at a scale that could not have been possible before,” McMillan said in Science.

The Happywhale software compares each fluke image with more than 900,000 photographs from all over the world. Cheeseman said the database includes images of 109,000 individuals, including an “Old Timer” first spotted in 1972 who was seen again this past summer.

In 2013 and 2017, Happywhale identified the record-breaking humpback around summer breeding grounds off the coast of Colombia. In 2022, the whale was spotted again, this time near Zanzibar — an archipelago that is part of Tanzania — off the eastern African coast. The humpback’s distinctive fluke pattern matched the previous images captured in the eastern Pacific.

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The finding was surprising since humpbacks normally stay in the same ocean basin, plus the Colombia population typically migrates from its breeding grounds in South America to Antarctica feeding grounds.

“Humpback whales undertake one of the longest known migrations of any mammal. While their migration route generally extends between latitudes, the breeding stocks are longitudinally separated and display high site fidelity to their feeding grounds,” the study published in Royal Society Open Science said.

The researchers aren’t sure where the record-setting humpback traveled between sightings, but it is likely that the whale went to Antarctica before the southwestern Indian Ocean, the home of another breeding population, according to co-author of the study Ekaterina Kalashnikova, a marine biologist with the Bazaruto Center for Scientific Studies and founder of the Tanzania Cetaceans Program.

It is “very likely the distances [the animal swam] were even greater” than the documented distance, Kalashinikova said, as reported by Science.

“This could be a simple story of a deeply confused whale,” said marine biologist Alexander Werth of Hampden-Sydney College, who was not part of the research. “But it’s more likely that this intrepid explorer is a lonely male desperately seeking mates.”

The findings demonstrate Happywhale’s potential to leverage the observations of citizen scientists to add vital data in understudied areas of cetacean research, said marine biologist Lisa Kettemer with the Arctic University of Norway, who was not involved in the research.

“We are learning way more because we have the tools in place,” Pirotta said, as The Guardian reported. “As a world we are way more connected, and that means that the stories that we can tell about whales are more connected globally than ever before.”

Researchers weren’t yet sure if the new technology was providing more information about established whale movements or if the unusual patterns indicated a changing environment impacted by climate change.

“This extreme distance movement demonstrates behavioural plasticity, which may play an important role in adaptation strategies to global environmental changes and perhaps be an evolved response to various pressures, underlining the importance of consolidation of global datasets on wide-ranging marine mammals,” the study said.

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The approval of plans for an oil and gas lease sale in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by the outgoing Biden administration on Monday will keep the door open for drilling in the pristine wildlands.

The sale, to be held on January 9, will include a smaller portion of the total land that was made available for bidding about four years ago during the Trump administration, reported The Associated Press.

“Drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is all risk with no reward,” said attorney for Earthjustice Erik Grafe, who has been a leader in litigation to protect the wildlife refuge, in a press release from Earthjustice. “Oil drilling would destroy this beautiful land, held sacred by Gwich’in people, and would further destabilize the global climate, but it offers zero benefit to taxpayers or consumers.”

In his promise to expand oil and gas drilling in the United States, President-elect Donald Trump referenced a law passed in 2017 that enabled the announcement.

The 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act — passed during Trump’s first term as president — included a requirement that two lease sales in the Arctic Refuge be held by the U.S. Department of the Interior before the end of this year, the press release said. The sale just approved by the Biden administration will be the second.

The first was held in 2021 by the Trump administration and generated just one percent of the estimated revenue promised to U.S. taxpayers when the leasing mandate was approved by Congress.

“Few oil companies bid, since banks and insurance companies wary of the high risk refused to back drilling programs there. Although the volume of recoverable oil in the Refuge is unknown, climate scientists have warned for decades that extracting and burning any amount of oil will accelerate climate change consequences such as droughts, heat waves, wildfires and extreme storm events,” Earthjustice said. “Pumping oil from the Arctic Refuge won’t result in lower oil prices, according to the federal Energy Information Administration, and building the necessary infrastructure would take decades.”

After a review of the leasing program by the Biden administration, seven leases made during the first sale were canceled, The Associated Press reported. Litigation around the cancellation is still pending.

The first lease sale is still being delayed by ongoing lawsuits, with environmentalists promising to bring them to court in order to stop drilling in the refuge.

“Congress should restore protections for the coastal plain rather than continue allowing these lands to be used as a political pawn,” said Brook Brisson, Trustees for Alaska senior staff attorney, as reported by the Anchorage Daily News. “We will stand with our clients, partners, and the majority of Americans in opposing the leasing of these lands and if that means challenging unlawful decisions in court, we’re prepared to do that again.”

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) said a formal decision to approve the lease sale has been issued for the refuge’s 1.6-million-acre coastal plain. The coastal plain is a vast wildlife refuge bordering the Beaufort Sea. The refuge is the habitat of caribou, polar bears, musk oxen and an array of bird species. The debate about whether to make the coastal plain available for oil drilling has been going on for decades.

Business groups, North Slope leaders and Alaska state politicians have been hoping for oil exploration in the delicately balanced ecosystem of the refuge. However, they complained that the amount of land being offered for lease — the minimum permitted by law — was not enough and could hamper bidding.

Some of the state’s political leaders have also expressed frustration with constraints on the planned lease sale. President of advocacy group Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat Nagruk Harcharek referred to the lease sale as “a deliberate attempt by the Biden administration’s Interior Department to kneecap the potential of development” in the wildlife refuge, as The Associated Press reported.

Some Alaska Tribes and conservation groups criticized the decision as having the potential to ramp up global heating if it means oil production in the region, while also putting caribou and other wildlife species at risk.

RaeAnn Garnett, Tribal government first chief of the Native Village of Venetie, said drilling in the refuge would amount to a “direct threat” to the Porcupine caribou herd and the Neets’ajj Gwich’in way of life.

“Our people have relied on this herd for our subsistence practices since time immemorial and expect to be able to rely on it for generations to come,” Garnett said, as reported by the Anchorage Daily News. “Any oil and gas development poses an undeniable threat to the caribou migration routes, which will impact our traditional subsistence-based way of life.”

According to the BLM, plans for potential development or exploration made after any oil leases are issued for the refuge would be subject to environmental review, The Associated Press reported.

“We’re committed to going to court as often as necessary to defend the Arctic Refuge from oil drilling and will work toward a more sustainable future that does not depend on ever-expanding oil extraction,” Grafe said in the press release.

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According to a new report from the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), more than three-quarters of the world’s land has become permanently dryer over the course of recent decades.

A combined area half as big as Australia has gone from being humid lands to drylands – an arid area with less rain for nature, pastures, crops and people.

“For the first time, scientists within UNCCD Science-Policy Interface have clearly documented current and future drying trends and impacts that reveal a global, existential peril previously shrouded by a fog of scientific uncertainty. Its name is aridity — the climatic and enduring condition of too little life-supporting moisture — and its effects threaten the lives and livelihoods of billions across almost every region of the globe,” the report said.

Forty percent of all the lands on Earth, excluding Antarctica, are now made up of drylands, reported The Guardian.

These changes over the past three decades are likely to be permanent because, as the report points out, “droughts end, and recovery is possible.”

“Droughts happen when the rain doesn’t fall or falls too little for extended but nevertheless limited periods,” the authors of the report wrote. “Rising aridity is different — it is an unrelenting menace that requires lasting adaptation measures. The drier climates now affecting vast regions across the globe will not return to how they were.”

Currently, one-quarter of the world’s population inhabits expanding drylands. Aridity projections suggest up to five billion people could live in drylands by 2100. All these people are either at risk of desertification or will be in the future. This can leave water scarce and people dehydrated or hungry, with ecosystems totally transformed.

“Human-caused climate change is the culprit; known for making the planet warmer, it is also making more and more land drier. The result is poor soil fertility, crop losses, biodiversity declines, intense sand and dust storms, frequent wildfires and, of course, greater food and water insecurity. Aridity-related water scarcity is causing illness and death and spurring large-scale forced migration around the world,” the report said.

Roughly 12 percent of Africa’s gross domestic product was lost from 1990 to 2015 due to increasing aridity.

“Unlike droughts – temporary periods of low rainfall – aridity represents a permanent, unrelenting transformation,” said Ibrahim Thiaw, UNCCD executive secretary, as The Guardian reported. “Droughts end. When an area’s climate becomes drier, however, the ability to return to previous conditions is lost.”

The drying landscape will affect some crops more than others. For instance, if current trends continue, maize output is predicted to be cut in half in Kenya by mid-century.

Drylands are areas where most of the rainfall — 90 percent — is lost to evaporation. This leaves just 10 percent to support vegetation. By 2050, two-thirds of lands worldwide will store less water, the report said.

The failure of humans to adequately mitigate greenhouse gas emissions has contributed to the global water crisis.

“Rising aridity deepens poverty, forces over-exploitation of fragile resources and accelerates land degradation, creating a vicious cycle of resource scarcity, water insecurity and diminished agricultural potential,” Kate Gannon, a London School of Economics Grantham Institute research fellow, told The Guardian. “These communities, with the least capacity to adapt, face dire consequences to health, nutrition and wellbeing from risks of food shortages, displacement, and forced migration. This is not only a profound injustice, but also a global challenge.”

Those inhabiting drylands across the world have doubled in recent decades from 1.2 billion in 1990 to 2.3 billion in 2020. If carbon emissions are not significantly reduced by the end of the century, that number is projected to double.

“For the first time, a UN scientific body is warning that burning fossil fuels is causing permanent drying across much of the world, with potentially catastrophic impacts affecting access to water that could push people and nature even closer to disastrous tipping points,” said UNCCD chief scientist Barron Orr, as reported by The Guardian. 

Mark Maslin, a University College London Earth system science professor, who was not part of the study, said the report was a warning, as well as “a call to politicians that there are solutions.”

“First: we can curb greenhouse gas emissions, which will reduce climate change and global aridification. Second, we can acknowledge the world is drying and take measures to slow it down and to adapt to it,” Maslin said, as The Guardian reported. “We now have so many solutions: sustainable agriculture, water management, reforestation and rewilding to education and awareness building. Ultimately good local and national governance is required to deal with the desertification of our precious life-giving planet.”

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